Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

Living with the Enemy: my week with a cult

A friend of mine has unearthed a documentary that I thought had disappeared: Living with the Enemy, shown on BBC2 in 1999, in which I spent a week secluded with the London Church of Christ, a group so authoritarian that it was accused of being a bullying cult. I can hardly bear to watch it. I was so young! So thin! There was some really creepy behaviour by leaders of the group – a deeply manipulative one-on-one session in which, I think, I gave as good as I got. The LCC went through tough times in the years following this programme: its international leadership fractured and its current website bears no trace of the people who befriended and monitored me. I liked most of the guys I met and wouldn't describe them as "the enemy" – but, believe me, a week cooped up with them was quite long enough.